Stillness sleeps until the heart awakens, until awareness turns and sees the uncreated presence that glorifies the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. The Father self-empties into the Son and the Son self-empties into the Father, from whom the Spirit proceeds to abide in the Son, restoring glory to the Father. Wisdom is forever still, even when glory is active in dynamic glorification, even when time drives a dynamic of changing states, empowering time to transfigure into the timeless presence of glory. The Spirit bears witness to the timeless oneness of God in Holy Trinity, liberating stillness from the bondage of desire and from the constrictions of frustrated intentions. Doubt disturbs stillness but wisdom frees doubts as they rise in the Spirit into the oneness of the Father and the Son, because the Spirit of wisdom blows where it wills, free of doubts and confusion. The divided mind confuses the uncreated with the created, perverting icons into idols as it drags stillness into dissipation. Dissipation follows ascetics into the desert to divide and bewilder them, but stillness silences the heart in desert solitude. The demon of dissipation is relentless but despairs when wisdom abides in uncreated stillness. Determined to spread despair among those who do not trust grace, demonic despair itself despairs when wisdom abides in the glory of uncreated stillness. According to the perspective of temporal existence, spiritual warfare never ends, but in timeless awareness, it ceases in the peace that abides in stillness without ceasing.
Primordial stillness is timelessly aware of the Spirit’s witness to the communion of the Son’s awareness with the Father’s presence, hidden at the heart of holy wisdom and hallowing glory. Stillness abides in God at centre, indivisibly God-centred, not compulsively self-centred, as the demons are. The dissipating mind is dying of the disease of its deceit, whereas the enlightened heart is awake and fully alive, always presently aware of the presence of uncreated awareness, beholding wisdom in dazzling glory and glory in bright wisdom. Faith trusts wisdom to deliver stillness from vainglory, generating light from light in the eye of the awakened heart, knowing glory as it is known by wisdom. Aware that awareness neither comes nor goes, stillness abides in the wisdom of pure awareness, timelessly present in the glory wisdom beholds. Waves of distraction inevitably rise and fall but wisdom neither gains from separation nor loses from confusion, beholding glory which is neither vain nor vacuous. Stillness abides in the midst, free of addiction or negativity, because confusion and division cannot intrude between the Father and the Son, or destroy their timeless union, or shatter the communion between the Spirit and their incorruptible union.
Timeless stillness is at home with solitude in the silence of radiant wisdom, grounding Hesychast practice in God-centred peace. Self-centred peace pretends to parody divine peace but causes miseries of strain and stress instead. Conventional religion covets or shuns what obsesses it, but wisdom abides in the stillness of the peace of God that passes all understanding. This is the hesychia that purifies and illumines the heart, the stillness that sustains the Spirit’s witness to glory in the reign of the Name. Elders never confuse it with obsessional stillness that clings to avoidance, remaining subject to conflicted emotions. Real peace purifies and illumines the heart, enabling awareness to open to the timeless mysteries of glory. Timeless stillness is forever pure, immaculately conceived by God through God, effortlessly present in its uncreated light. Since stillness is always inseparable from God, it is one with the glory of God that deifies the saints, like wisdom that enlightens and purifies their hearts. Such wisdom is certain of the uncreated presence that deifies elders and glorifies saints, liberating doubt into the joy of unconditioned blessing, releasing conflicted emotion into the fullness of uncreated completeness, steadfast in the peace of timeless stillness.